


Outside Nea Makri, Greece - 481 BC

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Mistletoe - Holiday Gifts from wwhiskeyandbloodd [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Children, Dogs, F/M, Family, Gen, Horses, Kronia Celebration, M/M, Marriage, Nostalgia, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:26:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They are missed. They will always be.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They are loved. They will always be.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside Nea Makri, Greece - 481 BC

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SLSmith22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLSmith22/gifts).



> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Hesperos helps Asherah kneel, when they come to pay tribute. Day after day she grows larger, and day after day she refuses to stop working on the farm with him. A stubborn woman from the moment he met her, approaching her with a cocky grin in the kitchen only to get slapped with a spoon and told to return to his company if he knew what was good for him.

He has loved her ever since.

Asherah reaches, as she always does, to touch the armor, first Hannibal’s, then Will’s, paying tribute with just that touch - a reminder that she would touch them were they here, and that she fears no veil of death between them when she touches them now. Hesperos reaches after her and touches the same way, to honor his best friend, and the young man who had the courage to follow him from this world to the next.

They are missed. They will always be.

They are loved. They will always be.

And so will she, tilting her head away with a smile as her husband brushes his nose across her temple. He will be more than that, soon - a father, though he already seems to be from the way he runs a hand across the swell beneath her chiton. She swats at him, and settles her knees stiffly to the packed earth floor to lay honey-sweet cakes and figs out for the men who gave her the farm she now calls home.

Her thanks are spoken in her native tongue, always allowed and never forgotten. Thanks for her freedom and for the farm and gratitude for their peace and honor in death. Thanks for Hesperos, who grins when he hears his name. Thanks for the child who she will call Hannibal, so that his name will live on in more than legend.

“Of everyone I imagined she might marry...” Hannibal observes, before reconsidering his words with a laugh. “No, in truth, I never imagined she might.”

“I knew she would,” Will counters, sitting up in bed, adjusting his chiton to fold beneath his thigh as he watches. He has always loved Asherah, she helped him become the man he was, strong and proud and empathetic. She taught him as much as Hannibal did. He watches, instead of Asherah, Hesperos. The way he cares for her, the genuine love and affection and desire there to have her as his wife. He looks, more often than not when Will sees him, entirely in awe of the fact that he is allowed near her, to care for her and help her, to love her.

He can think of no other man more deserving than he.

He still remembers Hesperos pulling him to stand in the aftermath of the battle. He remembers his quiet words and his promise that Will had honored Hannibal, that he had not done him any disservice.

It was Hesperos, then, who carried their armor home to rest.

It was Hesperos, then, who held Asherah as she wept silent against his chest.

It is Hesperos, now, who lights the incense and sets it to waft between the two sets of armor.

“Boy or girl?” Will whispers to Hannibal, as though their voices might be overheard. Now and then, they feel as though they are, when in laughter or swordplay Asherah stops suddenly and narrows her keen eyes.

Hannibal considers the question, and Will laid warm and heavy across his lap. He threads his fingers through wild curls and says, “A girl, as fierce and strong-minded as her mother.”

“She thinks it’ll be a boy.”

“There will be those, too, in time.”

Will turns to his back as the scent of incense fills him, and sighs its smoke upward, coiling against Hannibal’s long woven braid and bearded cheeks. “You sound certain.”

“I am,” Hannibal says. “Another strange gift from strange gods. Would that I had it in life. I’d have played far more winning games of dice that way.”

Will laughs, and, as always, Asherah raises her head at the sound, tilting her head towards Will’s armour. He hopes that she can hear them. He always does. A moment more they sit together, saying nothing yet saying everything in their silence, and then Hesperos helps her up, and with a gentle nudge against him to suggest she can walk alone, Asherah holds her stomach and waddles out of the quiet room towards the kitchen.

\---

Elpis is only two, but she understands as much as her mother tells her. She lights the incense and kneels by the armor of two men she has never known, and watches the shells of their memories intently, as though she is trying to remember them.

Behind her, the goddess whose name she shares, watches over her with a smile.

Will doesn’t see her often, she comes by but never stays. She accepts the flowers left for her, the wine, but she never lingers. Will always smiles at her. She always smiles at him. They do not share words again.

Hesperos begins to teach Elpis about horses as soon as she is old enough to follow him with toddling steps into the stables, and Hannibal follows them. She learns to touch them gently, her father holding her up so she can stroke against one of the horse’s soft noses, over the rough hair between its eyes. She never tugs their manes, she never pulls at their tails. Although Elpis is as quiet and calm as her father when he’s pensive, she is just as ferocious and stroppy as her mother when she does not get her way.

Arms folded, seated on the floor, Hannibal regards her at length. He shakes his head to clear the ideas of her future that appear crisp and clear to him, and looks upon the girl as she is instead.

“You should listen to your mother,” he suggests.

“No.”

Hannibal blinks, looking from Elpis towards the bedroom where Asherah folds her family’s linens and asks, “No - what?”

“No,” Elpis says, wonderfully petulant. “I’m not going to listen to you.”

“So do not,” her mother answers with a shrug. “And remain just where you are until supper.”

Recalling distantly, so very long ago, how the priests of Hannibal’s tribe revered the words of children, he wonders now if perhaps there was more truth to their faith than anyone realized. He settles to the floor beside the girl, one leg tucked beneath him, the other knee drawn up, and when he reaches to touch her braid, she leans away from him. Hannibal’s smile widens.

“Elpis,” he says. “Will you tell your mother something for me?”

“Why?” There’s a hum of vague displeasure from where Asherah works, so Elpis lowers her voice and asks again. “Why?”

“It will make her laugh,” Hannibal says. “And maybe she’ll let you go play outside then.”

Elpis squints, not at him directly, but listening - hearing, distinctly and clearly, his voice, at an age before reason and responsibility will kindly remove from her an ability that would be seen as madness by others. She is, for now, an imaginative child making up stories.

“Tell her,” Hannibal says, pausing in thought. “Tell her that someone brave enough to spit on the sandals of their master can wage better wars.”

Elpis frowns but she doesn’t disregard the advice. She waits, instead, until her mother is near the door again before turning to pass the message along. Asherah stops for a moment, breathless, before her laughter bubbles bright from her chest. She presses her hand to her lips and shakes her head, eyes directed to the sky a moment as she murmurs something Elpis does not hear, but Hannibal does.

He smiles and she sighs, and after a moment, she kneels to coax her daughter closer, hugging her in forgiveness for the slight now neither remember.

“Go help your father,” she says, and Elpis runs happily to oblige. For a good long while, Asherah watches the empty room before her, and only when she is satisfied with having paid her dues to the man helping her parent, she stands again. “Next time, I won’t be so easy to sway,” she tells Hannibal.

“Besides,” she adds with amusement, “you were _never_ my master.”

\---

The twins are hardly as quiet as their sister, but they, too, listen when Hesperos tells them of Hannibal and Will. The boy wriggles in his delight at having his name associated with such a proud and beautiful warrior. Mischa asks why she could not have the name of the warrior at his side.

“You have his spirit,” Hesperos tells her, gently tugging her curling hair until she grins. “And there is little more important than that.”

Elpis rides, now, six years old and poised and strong as both her parents combined. She cooks with her mother and helps her father tend the horses. The twins she mostly ignores, they are too young for her sophisticated tastes, and it amuses Will to no end as he watches the two of them plot and plan to get their sister’s attention.

They are identical, the two little things, sharing the names of Hannibal and his sister and embodying their mischievous attitudes with ease. They help their mother with chores, delighted to run and shriek in the wind as she hangs up the washing and they hold it aloft for the wind to catch and whip around them. They greet their father by clinging to his legs when he comes home, and bewildered he looks to his wife and smiles, so wide his eyes shine with it.

“Please, please,” he asks, “can we have another?”

“So you say, having spent all day cavorting at the agora,” she snorts, fighting down a smile.

“Cavorting, working, attempting to train up a bunch of stripling boys into something that might suffice as soldiers,” he shrugs, before with a laugh, he bends to scoop up a child in each arm. They laugh, seated on his hips, as he comes closer to Asherah. “I’d rather have been here.”

“Washing linens and fixing fences? I’d rather have had you here,” she says. When he leans to kiss her, she tilts her cheek towards him, and then waits expectantly for another, which he gives her gladly.

“The goats again?”

“Same goat, same fence. Your eldest has taken it upon herself to ride along the fences and look for more gaps.”

“You see how clever they are?” Hesperos laughs. “How helpful and strong?”

“I'm going to assume you mean the goats," she grins. "I hear what you’re truly asking, and I’m choosing to pretend as if I do not.”

“You love me.”

“And you love me,” she responds, setting a hand to her hip and smiling at her husband, who grins at her as though she is light itself. “We are as equal after that statement as we were before, Hesperos.”

“I adore you,” he sighs, leaning in to kiss her again, and this she allows, laughing when he goads the kids to kissing her too, and the four of them gather in a swarm of laughter and adoration. Elpis is caught on her way to her room by a sneaky hand of her brother to join in, and eventually warms to it as well, serious though she is.

She no longer talks to Hannibal, but he knows she listens. She hears his adjustments to ride stronger, she heeds them. And as she becomes less the ethereal and wild little thing of youth, Will finds his place with the twins.

And the twins find their place with the dogs. Descendents of the pack they kept, as Will’s dogs came to join he and Hannibal one by one, though several still remain in Asherah’s keeping. Riot sleeps at her feet in the kitchen and accompanies her out at night to take in the wash. Snow, Will knows from Hesperos’ words, lives happily in the barracks of their former regiment, now under Hesperos’ capable command.

“What will you name them?” Will asks the twins, as they crouch to watch wide-eyed the new pups squirming against their mother.

Mischa reaches out to touch, gently, just her fingertips against the soft pink paws of the little dogs that will grow to be anything but.

“Storm,” she says, giggling as her brother shakes his head, serious and straight-backed, taking his job incredibly seriously, watching over the little pups while his father and mother get more water to wash them clean and help their mother settle in to rest.

“Star,” little Hannibal says instead, pointing to the little markings on the pup’s tiny chest. “This one is Star.”

Will laughs, settling in closer to watch the dogs and the kids at play together. Asherah’s children are all gentle, though some are quieter than others. They never harm, they never seek to. Even the wild cats that live in the barn get left milk by one of the kids during the winter months. They always take care to bring the kittens who have fallen from their soft little nests back to where their mothers can reach them.

“And this one is Sword,” Mischa declares at random, as the little pups squirm and peep at their mother, seeking warmth and milk. “He is the dog I will take to war with me.”

Will laughs, brows lifted. Once, long long ago, the declaration would have alarmed him. He’s learned since then, in many ways, what it means to fight for one’s home. More, he knows what it means to have something worth defending.

“Will you go to war?”

“I want to be a soldier,” Mischa says, adamant, “just like my father.”

“That’s very brave,” Will says. “Sword will be a good companion.”

Her brother frowns. “I don’t want to fight.”

Will knows that feeling, too.

“There need to be some who do, and some who do not,” he says. “What will you do instead?”

“I want to be a farmer. Star will help me move the goats.”

Will couldn’t be prouder if he tried.

\---

Althea comes into the world shrieking, and she is the youngest of all her siblings to visit the small shrine that is now a constant in Asherah’s home. Hesperos brings his daughter just days after she’s born for the men in his life to meet her.

“I never thought I would have children,” he says softly, cradling the little thing against him as she pushes her lips together to blow little bubbles and watch them pop. “I never thought I would want to, in this world, with my life. I just imagine what you would be telling them, now, were you here in person with us. How you would teach them to ride, how you would watch them raise the dogs.” Hesperos laughs and rocks back a little, leaning against the foot of the bed

The armor has long ago grown heavy with age and wear that no amount of diligent care could control. Yet still, weekly, they come as a family to pay their respects. Sometimes together, sometimes apart. The children never need to be reminded to come, they choose to on their own. Elpis speaks near-fluent Neuri now, which makes Hannibal weep every time he hears her speaking it to them. She has her mother’s aptitude for learning, and has picked up all her languages.

“I miss you,” Hesperos admits, adjusting the little blanket holding his tiny daughter warm. “I miss you both. But I never feel like you are far away.”

“Closer than you’d think,” Will says with a smile, as Hannibal snorts a little laugh.

Both look over Hesperos’ shoulder where he sits, at the foot of the bed where Asherah sleeps in hard-won exhaustion. He has helped to deliver every baby, and through innate awareness and deep compassion, seen each child and their fearless mother through the harrowing process. They have been there, directing in what small way they can in those moments when the veil is so very thin, to guide back the children who came to close to their side.

“Do you remember,” Hesperos begins, before a laugh shakes him, kept quiet so as not to disrupt his beloved in her rest. “Do you remember when I first tried to kiss her?”

“I remember you returning to our table with a blackened eye,” Hannibal grins. “You told us that you’d slipped on the way to the skoramides, nevermind that it was the other direction.”

“Lucky she didn’t break my nose,” Hesperos muses. “Luckier still when she cursed at me and kissed me after, anyway.”

Will laughs, he can’t help it. Every time Hannibal tells that story, or Asherah, or Hesperos, it amuses him and warms his heart entirely. The love there, from the very beginning, between all of them, is so strong that it keeps them all together now. It keeps Hannibal and Will together as this family grows and Asherah and Hesperos age.

“God, I love her.”

They are beautiful.

All of them are beautiful.

Althea makes a fussy sound and begins to cry and her father holds her close and rocks her softly as Asherah wakes and reaches for him so she can take their daughter to feed her. She sleeps in here, in Hannibal and Will’s room, when she has her children. She claimed once, half-awake, it was because she felt safer here, she felt watched over. Hannibal wonders if it isn’t to let them both see the children they are helping raise. Will wonders if it isn’t because she misses them as much as they miss her.

Althea is quieted when she starts to nurse, and Hesperos strokes the tiny silken strands of hair on her head as he presses his forehead to Asherah’s and asks her softly how she is.

\---

“They have better things to do,” Hannibal murmurs, resting in bed and regarding the door with narrowed eyes.

“They’ll remember,” Will assures him, nosing against his shoulder. “They always do. Elpis always does.”

“How long will it be, do you think, before the stories shift enough to become unrecognizable to us?” Hannibal muses. “Elpis sharing our stories with her children, though she never met us. Her children passing on what they remember of what she told them, our armor slowly rusting…”

Will regards him with amusement and a little dismay. “Does it matter, so long as they remember something of us?”

Settling his cheek to Will’s brow, Hannibal strokes Will’s curls. “I suppose not,” he smiles. “Perhaps in time, it will be we who defeated all of Persia.”

With a laugh, Will slides across Hannibal’s chest, wide and strong, skimming a hand along his shoulder. Hannibal too traces the curve of Will’s neck, down across the horse emblazoned in ash and blood within his skin. Perhaps he would have earned more marks, had they more time in that life. Perhaps he would have not. Perhaps a plague would have seen them both die shameful in their beds.

Does it matter?

Not at all.

Not when their honor is known and their names spoken of with admiration - and sometimes fond scorn, from Asherah who knew them best. Not when children have taken their names to carry them on. Not when they are here, in a house filled lush with cypress boughs and juniper to welcome in the winter. Not when they are together, still, as they swore to the gods they would be.

Hannibal draws a breath as Will’s lips seek sweetly over his own. He remembers their first clumsy kisses, snarling combativeness giving way to admiration and affection. He remembers every kiss that followed. And none in memory taste so sweet as their reality now, lips warmed with wine and incense and kisses that taste of figs and olives. Hannibal’s fingers seek beneath the shoulder of Will’s chiton and slip it slowly onto his arm, grin widening as Will finally laughs against his mouth.

“Stubborn boy,” Hannibal sighs. “Will you deny me now, too?”

Will sets a hand against Hannibal’s mouth gently, and kisses against it. “For just a moment,” he says.

One passes, and another, and then the shuffling of little feet make their way down the hall as Althea, followed by Mischa and Elpis and finally Hannibal, walk in carrying the large bough from their front door between them. They whisper, so as not to wake their parents, and they pick their way across the dark room they know so well, from birth, to set the bough between the two armors that still stand proudly on display.

Elpis tugs at Hannibal’s hand and he goes, holding it and holding his other out for Mischa to take. So joined, all four children say goodnight to the two men they only know from stories and whispered memories of youth. And then they go.

The last to stay is Elpis, always, and with a pause by the door, she turns to the two of them and narrows her eyes, pressing her finger against her lips to hush them. And then she closes the door. Will snorts - he can’t help it, he never can - and removing his hand from Hannibal’s lips, he kisses him deep, slipping the shoulder of his chiton down and off, given permission, now, to enjoy their evening together on the eve of the solstice.


End file.
